SOURCE: Marcus Tullius Cicero, &The Testimony of Cicero,& in The Epicurus Reader: Selecting Writings and Testimonia, translated and edited by Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994, pp. 47-64.

The following excerpts from Cicero range from the most judicious of Cicero's critiques of Epicurus, when he engages details of Epicurus's ideas, to his most vehement manifestations of dislike.

text 14: Gi; text 14: on Goals 1.18-20 =~ Son Goals 1.18-20

18. Epicurus generally does not go far wrong when he follows Democritus … but these are the catastrophes which belong to Epicurus alone. He thinks that these same indivisible and solid bodies move down in a straight line by their own weight and that this is the natural motion of all bodies. 19. Then this clever fellow, when it occurred to him that if they all moved directly down and, as I said, in a straight line, it would never come...